Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government

Leasehold

lord truscott: To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they have any plans to reform the leasehold system to introduce the principle of fairnessin the application of service charges and ground rent, and to tackle other related issues, in the light of the Law Commission's summary of proposed solutions for leaseholders of houses, published on 18 July.

lord bourne of aberystwyth: The Government is committed to ensuring there is transparency and fairness in the leasehold market. In particular we announced measures on 21 December 2017 to limit ground rents in newly created leases to a peppercorn and require new build houses to be sold on a freehold basis. We will be consulting shortly on how we intend to implement these commitments. The Government will also be setting up a working group to consider, amongst other things, service charges to make sure they are fair and transparent. In addition we have asked the Law Commission to consider a range of options for reforming the law on enfranchisement to make it easier, quicker and cheaper for leaseholders to buy their freehold or extend their lease. The Law Commission intends to consult on the details of its proposals over the autumn.

Department for Work and Pensions

Occupational Pensions: Small Businesses

lord taylor of warwick: To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to (1) ensure that small and medium-sized enterprises that have set up an auto-enrolment pension scheme have done so correctly, and (2) safeguard workers against pension contribution errors made by their employers.

baroness buscombe: Automatic enrolment has been a great success, with over 9.8 million employees enrolled and more than 1.3 million employers having met their duties to date.The Department and The Pensions Regulator remain committed to enabling small and micro employers to comply with automatic enrolment by making the experience as straightforward as possible for this group. As part of this work, the Regulator launched an interactive step-by-step guide. This simplified guide to meeting automatic enrolment duties is designed to meet the specific needs of employers who may not have pensions experience, including those with just one or two staff. The guide includes an online tool so that employers can easily find out what they will need to do to comply and when. Using the online tool also means employers will receive tailored communications relevant to their circumstances. The step-by-step guide to automatic enrolment can be found on their website. Government has put in place a robust, proportionate compliance framework. This is administered by The Pensions Regulator, and includes detailed regulatory guidance about how to comply with the law. An employer is required to select a qualifying pension scheme; enrol qualifying staff into that scheme, and deduct any contributions payable under automatic enrolment.Employers are also required to pay those contributions across to their chosen pension provider by a set deadline. Although the deadlines for contribution payments vary, depending on the type of scheme being used, there is an overall legal deadline of the twenty-second day of the following month; which aligns with the HMRC deadline for paying tax and National Insurance.Qualifying pension schemes for automatic enrolment are subject to the same regulatory framework as all trust-based workplace pension schemes, also overseen by The Pensions Regulator. The Regulator has published codes of practice on its website setting out how trustees of defined contribution pension schemes and managers of personal pension schemes should monitor the payment of contributions; provide information to help members check their contributions; and report material payment failures to the Regulator.

Department for Work and Pensions: Families

baroness eaton: To ask Her Majesty's Government how many Department for Work and Pensions policieshave been assessed against theFamilyTest; and whether they will publishany such assessments.

baroness buscombe: The government is committed to supporting families. To achieve this, in 2014 we introduced the Family Test, which aims to ensure that impacts on family relationships and functioning are recognised early on during the process of policy development and help inform the policy decisions made by Minsters. There is no requirement for departments to publish the results of assessments made under the Family Test.

Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs

Bees

baroness kennedy of cradley: To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their latest assessment of the health of the bee population in the UK.

lord gardiner of kimble: The National Bee Unit has an extensive programme of monitoring and advisory visits to beekeepers to check for the presence of notifiable pests and diseases of honey bees and provide advice on biosecurity within the hive. They carry out around 5,000 visits per year. Levels of endemic notifiable diseases (European and American foulbrood) remain at low levels. The Government has well-tested plans to tackle incursions of exotic pests, such as the Asian hornet, which have been successfully used to find and destroy nests. The number of beekeepers registered on the BeeBase system (the National Bee Unit’s biosecurity system which underpins the bee health actions of the Government’s inspectorate) has increased significantly over the last 10 years from 12 thousand to over 40 thousand today.   In terms of wild bees, the UK’s ‘Status of Pollinating Insects’ indicator summarises trends for almost 400 pollinating insect species and was last published on the 19th July 2018. It measures how widespread each species is in each year since 1980 and shows that the overall status of pollinating insects has declined, but has stabilised in recent years. The Government is keeping this under review as an encouraging but not yet definitive sign of progress and is determined to continue working to see positive results across the full range of activities under the National Pollinator Strategy to improve the health of our bees.

Pollinators: Conservation

baroness kennedy of cradley: To ask Her Majesty's Government whether assessment they have made of the success of the National Pollinator Strategy.

lord gardiner of kimble: In 2017, the UK Government published the first progress report for the National Pollinator Strategy. It highlights positive progress with the Strategy’s 34 actions, undertaken in partnership with voluntary groups, farmers, growers and within the government estate.   For example, in 2015, we introduced a Pollinator and Wildlife Package to our Countryside Stewardship Scheme to provide a suite of habitats on farmland. Since 2011, through this package and other actions, we have established management on approximately 130,000 hectares of land to create new wildlife-rich habitat in the wider countryside.   We have established a dedicated UK pollinator monitoring and research partnership, and developed an indicator of trends in the status of pollinating insects. The indicator was last published on 19 July 2018. It shows that the overall status of pollinating insects has declined since 1980, but has stabilised in recent years. We are keeping this under review as an encouraging but not yet definitive sign of progress.   We will review and refresh the Strategy’s aims by 2019 to strengthen our response based on an improved understanding of the baselines, the impact of pressures and the role of pollinators. We are determined to continue working to see positive results across the full range of the Strategy’s outcomes.